With the development of the communication technology, people can provide a document to clients or business partners by an access link and a user having the access link can obtain the document provided by the access link by clicking on it.
In prior art, a method for providing a document comprises: receiving an access request sent by a user for a target document and determining whether an access link used by the user is valid; if the access link is valid, then providing the target document to the user; if the access link becomes invalid, the document provided by the access link will not be accessible by clicking on the access link by anyone.
However, the user who has obtained the document provided by the access link when the access link is valid cannot access the document provided by the access link any more after the access link becomes invalid. In this case, the document provider is required to reset the access link and thus other users can obtain the document again, which is inconvenient for the document provider to use or the object to whom the document is shared.